Come what may and love it

So after months of my wife asking me (literally every day) I am writing a blog post to inform/celebrate/party etc. over what has just happened in our life. We found out a couple days ago that our church (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) has hired me to teach seminary. For those who aren't familiar, seminary is a scripture study class for youth in high school. (See Kam's previous posts about it here and here)In areas where youth of our church are highly populated teachers are paid for teaching these classes full-time. This mainly takes place in Utah, Idaho, and Arizona. Outside of that area it is taught by volunteers and that is what both Kamille and I took part in when we were in high school. We are SO excited!!!

In order to show just how big this is for us I am going to give a timeline approach. This is the journey to a career and believe it or not it starts many years ago.

TIMELINE 
  • May 2006 - Graduating from Ponderosa High School - All my friends ask me if I am going to be a school teacher because my Mom, Dad, and both sisters taught at my school. My oldest brother even substitute taught. Let's just say I responded by laughing in their faces...
  • September 2006-2008 - Mission Time - Time to teach the Gospel for two years to everyone I came in contact with in South and North Dakota. I was so NERVOUS...but it was in my first area that I remember realizing, "Teaching this gospel stuff feels good!!" So for the next two years I studied everything I could about how to be a better missionary and how to meet the needs of those I was trying to help. About one year into it, during a time when we had no one to teach, I remember turning to my companion and almost yelling, "I would pay anyone on the street five bucks just to let us teach them!" I loved teaching the gospel and that love grew exponentially over the next year as I saw many people change their lives and find Jesus Christ. There was an older couple in our mission that worked as seminary teachers at one time and I would ask them hundreds of questions every time I saw them. I was so curious about religious education! One time Alex Skinner (at that time the Dean of Religious Education at BYU) came to our mission to speak and I cornered him in church and asked him 50 questions about what he did) At the end of my mission, my mission president's wife told me to go home and be a professor. 
  • September 2008 - Starting BYU - I got home and had no idea what I wanted to do. For some reason I really felt the need to teach. I mentioned that I wanted to teach religion to some other people and I remember them telling me that's how everyone felt when they came home from their mission and that it would wear off. I felt different though. I remember going to a career fair in the ballroom and after walking around to hundreds of different careers I found one the Seminaries & Institutes one. There was no one there talking to the guy so I took advantage to ask him how he loved his profession. He proceeded to tell me how amazing it was but broke my heart when he said you couldn't start the training program until you were a junior and you had to graduate in something other than religion. Well forget that I wasn't waiting that long...
  • April 2009 - Enter Kamille First Date - After completing my first year of generals I went on my first date with Kamille up in Provo Canyon. I remember distinctly when Kam, while staring at me googly-eyed, asked me what I wanted to do with my life. I told her I wasn't sure. Yeah, she was not so into that. I then told her I had a secret passion for teaching though. Not school teaching but gospel teaching.
  • April 2009 - August 2010 - Dating, Not dating, Dating, Not Dating, Courting, Marriage... - During the beginning months of us dating Kamille went home be a counselor at EFY (a church youth camp) where she found she began to like the idea of having a religious educator as a husband (this showed she already wanted the last name Fox). She discovered this while talking to the session director's wife and asking all sorts of questions about their marriage and family life. Kam was not very fond of this career choice in the beginning but she was warming up to it. The funny thing is I decided during this time I was going to study exercise science and go to grad school for physical therapy. So the religious education idea actually became lost during this time. 
  • August 2010 - Start of Fall Semester Junior Year - While setting up classes for this semester we were organizing all the classes I needed for grad school and finishing generals. I needed a couple more credits and the thought came to me that I should do the beginning seminary teaching class just to help improve my teaching. I started this class and on the first day I was in love!!! I called Kamille from then on after almost every class. I was pumped out of my mind because this class kicked the trash of the chemistry, biology, and physics I was taking. I felt so good when I went there. I loved writing papers and homework in this class. What was happening!? So if you aren't familiar with how the seminary teaching program works at BYU...You go through the first training class and teach for 10 min. in front of some "pre-service leaders" and if they like you and feel this career may be right for you they invite you back to the next semester where you go through another training class. At the end of this training class you teach a live seminary class full of 30 teenagers for two weeks. Depending on how you do they might invite you to student teach the next semester. If you do well student teaching the next semester THEN you MIGHT get hired!!! 
  • January 2011 - Student Teaching??? - After finishing my first class of training the leaders called me in and told me that they want to combine my 2nd and 3rd semesters together. Wait that meant they wanted me to student teach right now?! Yep...I started student teaching my own two classes of 30 fourteen year olds in Alpine with absolutely no experience. They told me they did this because they wanted me to be ready to be hired in December when I graduated. All the sudden our career choice was balanced between PT and Seminary.
  •  January 2012 - Graduation and ready to be hired?? - So at this time we were expecting to get hired for sure considering they shortened my program so I'd be ready for mid-year. Kept waiting....waiting....waiting...never happened. They then notified me that we were going to student teach for a third semester, still not knowing if we are going to get hired or not. This time period was our family trial of patience. 
  • April 2012 - God Answers Prayers - After student teaching for 3 semesters, not knowing what will happen, the blessings came. This last Friday, while I was golfing, I received a quick phone call from one of my pre-service leaders. He said,
  "I am calling to let you know we want to hire you full time into Seminaries and Institutes of Religion. What do you think about that???"

          I am pretty sure I was already half crying considering all that we had been through. With a child on the way and not knowing what my career was going to be, God heard our prayers! And believe me they were many! We are in! We will find out in the next month where we will be working but at least we know that it is sealed. We found a career to raise our family in and what better career than this! How thankful I am to be able to assist in helping others come closer to Jesus Christ and study the scriptures for work. The blessings are many in our lives now and we know that when you wait on God and do what's right he takes care of you. That's the truth!
 

Comments

  1. i read the whole thing evan :) so so happy for you guys and so proud of you evan for really doing what you love! you will be an amazing teacher! love y'all!

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  2. I'm so happy that everything is finally falling into place just perfectly for yall :)

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  3. I also read the entire post and I am thrilled for you Evan!!! I know what if feels like to exercise patience for a job! You and Kamille have so much to be thankful for this year with this job and especially the baby coming in the fall!! CONGRATS!!

    -Carolyn Baggett

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  4. Hooray!!!!!! So happy for you! what a relief. I remember that feeling when we got into medical school. Congrats congrats.

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  5. "The Man" at it again! :)Really, I don't think life can get much better for you guys. Marriage: check. Baby: check. Jobs: check. GOOD WORK! I know you guys deserve it! LOVE YOU BOTH and I can't wait for baby Fox to see what Dad does! :)

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